Happy Pioneer Day (Utah) from your friends at CertMag

Yeah, we know. Sometimes it probably seems like we don’t do anything at all around here during the summer months. Tuesday, July 24, is a state holiday here in Utah, where Certification Magazine HQ is located. We’ll only be present in spirit today, but we aren’t going to disappear entirely.

We promise to return on Thursday with more of the IT certification excellence that our patrons are accustomed to. Until then, however, we hope you’ll enjoy learning a little bit more about our home turf. Pioneer Day in Utah is sort of a Founder’s Day celebration, honoring the arrival of the first U.S. settlers.

After fleeing religious persecution in Illinois, Mormon refugees entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847, and decided they had found a new homeland. (At the time, present-day Utah was unorganized territory claimed by Mexico, then at war with the United States.)

So today we’re honoring Utah with one of our characteristic holiday quizzes. Enjoy, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

1) What are the highest and lowest points in Utah?

2) Who was the first governor of Utah?

3) How many arches are there in Arches National Park?

4) Who is the richest person in Utah?

5) Where does Utah rank on the list of the 10 U.S. states with the highest per capita consumption of ice cream and frozen yogurt?

6) What was Delicate Arch called before it was called Delicate Arch?

7) Who were the earliest human inhabitants of Utah?

8) Is the Great Salt Lake really saltier, generally speaking, than the world’s oceans?

9) In a fight between a Utahraptor and an Allosaurus, which would win?

10) How many people visited Utah’s five national parks in 2016?

ANSWERS

1) The summit of King’s Peak in the Uinta Mountains is Utah’s highest point, at 13,528 feet above sea level. Utah’s lowest elevation, at 2,180 feet above sea level, is Beaver Dam Wash in the southwestern corner of the state along its border with Arizona.

2) The first territorial governor of Utah, appointed in 1851 by President Millard Fillmore, was the Mormon leader Brigham Young. Twelve different men, including one who served two separate, non-consecutive terms, successively served as governor of the Utah Territory. With the dawn of statehood in 1896, the first person to serve as elected governor of Utah was native son Heber M. Wells, a graduate of the University of Utah.

3) There are more than 2,000 documented sandstone arches in Arches National Park. New arches are continually being formed by wind and water, while old ones collapse from time to time. Notably, Wall Arch, formerly the 12th-largest span in the park, collapsed in the night on Aug. 4, 2008.

4) Gail Miller. The wife of the late Larry H. Miller has a net worth of $1.2 billion. Among Miller’s businesses are the Utah Jazz professional basketball franchise, more than 60 auto dealerships, and the Megaplex movie theater chain.

5) No. 8. Though residents of Utah have a reputation for loving ice cream, there is higher per capita consumption of ice cream in the following six states plus one region (listed in order): District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Texas, Connecticut and Delaware. No. 9 and No. 10 are New Hampshire and Kansas.

6) The 60-foot freestanding arch, perhaps the most widely recognized and photographed natural feature in Utah, was previously known among local cowboys as both The Chaps and The Schoolmarm’s Bloomers, because of its rough resemblance to bowl-legged human posture. The name Delicate Arch was bestowed by Frank Beckwith during a scientific survey of the area in the winter of 1933-34.

7) Archaeological evidence suggests that nomadic hunter-gatherers of the Desert Archaic Culture lived in Utah as early as 10,000 B.C., followed by a succession of numerous American Indian cultures and tribes. Though the Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado may have passed through southern Utah as early as 1540 while searching for the legendary city of gold, Cibola, it’s generally believed that the Spanish Catholic priests Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante became the first Europeans to visit Utah in 1776,

8) Though its salinity fluctuates as its level rises and falls, the water of the Great Salt Lake generally has a saline content of between 50 and 270 parts per thousand, compared to the 35 parts per thousand found on average in the world’s oceans. The saline content of Israel’s Dead Sea is generally measured at 330 parts per thousand.

9) It’s believed that a mature Utahraptor would have been no larger than 23 feet long, with a weight of 1,100 pounds, roughly comparable in mass to a mature polar bear. A mature allosaurus, on the other hand, could have been as large as 32 feet long, weighing as much as 5,000 pounds. Some of the best-preserved and most complete allosaurus fossils ever found were discovered at Utah’s Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry near the San Rafael Swell — hence the question.

10) 10,087,077 people visited Utah’s five national parks in 2016, more than three times the total number of year-round Utah residents. The most-visited park was Zion National Park (4,295,177 total visitors), followed by Bryce Canyon National Park (2,365,110 visitors), Arches National Park (1,585,718 visitors), Capitol Reef National Park (1,064,904 visitors) and Canyonlands National Park (776,218 visitors).